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Category Archives: Media

Amanda Mannen at Cracked has written on why getting MAD at magazines for photoshopping hot girls to be even hotter is stupid. There’s some feminist crap in there, but the points themselves aren’t too bad. The final one though brings up a good point, then stops dead before reaching something really interesting.

The uncomfortable truth is that most of us don’t actually want to eradicate cultural standards of beauty — we just want them changed to include us.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was familiar with Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism. That’s not the part I want to talk about, simply an interesting observation. Here’s the meat:

This isn’t the same as in entertainment, which serves a completely different function. The chief complaint about sexy ladies in those media is that that’s all they’re there for … or at least it’s presented as their most important quality. We run into problems only when we’re taught that a) “hot” is the most important thing a woman can be, and b) we do not meet that standard. How insane is it to propose as a solution to that dilemma, “Well, let’s just change the standard”? You might as well be trying to prevent tornadoes by removing the Earth’s atmosphere.

Here she identifies the superficial problem, women in the media are judged by sexiness and sexiness alone, and she identifies that changing the standard to include fatties and uglies doesn’t change the fact that the standard of ‘hot’ itself is corrupt.

She then goes on to blame this on the media and advertisements.

But, as the Last Psychiatrist was fond of saying before he disappeared, if you’re watching it, it’s for you. The media, however much I rag on it and however much of a sewer it might be, doesn’t exist in a bubble. Even more so, advertisements don’t. Advertisements have to actually have people who identify with them to be effective.

In other words, if people didn’t already value ‘hot’ to the exclusion of other virtues the media wouldn’t be able to use ‘hot’ as the sole standard.

This is where her thinking stops. Why do people, particularly women, accept that ‘hot’ is the standard to which they should aspire?

As I’ve pointed out before this is the new hedonism, how sexiness has become the greater good, especially for women. This is not going to change, because ‘hot’ is the only value left.

However much some feminists and some MGTOWs rage against it, men and women want to be together with each other. They want to love and be loved. This is natural, this is good. To attain this love, attraction is important. Men are attracted to the feminine, women are attracted to the masculine.

Our society has been working to destroy the feminine in women and the masculine in men. As well, society actively lies to both men and women about what the other sex finds attractive. The traditional lovely, feminine virtues that women used to use to attract a man: kindness, joy, peacefulness, chastity, submission, vulnerability, motherliness, cooking, housekeeping, etc. have been maligned by feminism and replaced with repulsive traits of rebellion and argumentativeness (disguised as moxie and independence). Meanwhile, the traditional masculine traits that men would use to attract women have been beaten out of them through public schooling.

Once inner beauty has been destroyed, what does a woman have to offer a man? How can she find love? Men aren’t attracted to degrees, they aren’t attracted to over-exaggerated work titles, they aren’t attracted to argumentativeness or rebellion. Meanwhile, she can’t find it by being lovely, because being lovely is anti-feminist, which is evil. The only thing she has left to attract a man are her looks and her vagina. So, the woman try to be hot, so her looks and her vagina can land a man. She has to make up her lack of inner beauty, her lack of loveliness, with sexuality, hotness.

Hence, why the media focuses on the standard of hot. Women want to be hot, because they want to find love and their other paths to love have been taken from them. If people want advertising to change, they have to change the values consumers hold. As long as women value hot the media will sell them hot.

Hot is the standard and will remain the standard for women to find love as long as feminism reigns for it is the only standard men find attractive that is not in itself intrinsically antithetical to feminist values.

Here we can see the West’s priorities: a dozen left-wing journalists get killed by the same people they fought so hard to import and it is an international crisis that everyone must care about. 1400 innocent children get raped by those same imports and nobody gives a shit.

You should have been angry months ago.

Anyway, here’s my opinion on Charlie Hebdo: they got what they deserved the natural consequences of their pro-immigration beliefs (Ed: Ill-phrased and added a clarification) and I’m not going to shed a tear. May God grant them mercy in the next life.

Charlie Hebdo was a vile left-wing rag that regularly engaged in anti-Christian blasphemy. They are not ‘us‘. The Muslims aren’t us, but neither are Charlie Hebdo. If our enemies want to start killing each other, why should we involve ourselves? Let them take each other out.

I do have some sympathy for free speech and I might be sympathetic if Charlie Hebdo was staunch ideological pro-free speech organization but like most left-wingers Charlie are very selective in their desire for free speech. From Charlie Hebdo’s wiki:

In 2008, controversy broke over a column by veteran cartoonist Siné which led to accusations of antisemitism and Siné’s sacking by Val. Siné sued the newspaper for unfair dismissal and Charlie Hebdo was sentenced to pay him €90,000 in damages. Siné launched a rival paper called Siné Hebdo which later became Siné Mensuel. Charlie Hebdo launched its Internet site, after years of reluctance from Val.

Charlie gutlessly sacked a cartoonist for violating a more-untouchable taboo. I guess they fear Jews more than Muslims. They are not pro-free speech, they are simply anti-religion. Why should I, or any religious person, support them in this?

To add is this:

On 26 April 1996 François Cavanna, Stéphane Charbonnier and Philippe Val filed 173,704 signatures, obtained in 8 months, with the aim of banning the political party Front National, since it would have contravened the articles 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

The people at Charlie loved free speech and free assembly so much, they literally tried to ban a political party* and silence 15% of the population. (I wonder if they would/will reconsider their dislike of FN now?)

There is no reason to support Charlie. All this is is a left-wing organization, a supporter of diversity, receiving the natural consequences of diversity. If you invite savages into your country, do not be surprised when savagery results. Mourn not for those who helped engineer the invasion, but for those innocents who suffer due to it.

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* Mike Anissimov indicated on Twitter that it may have been a joke (as did another rude person), but I haven’t been able to find a source for that. Wikipedia and the article wikipedia sources seem to be playing it straight (‘pilon’, translated ‘drumstick’ at the end, also means to pulp a book). Othersources than wiki seem to take it seriously as well. The translations of a random set of these forum members seem to take the attempted ban seriously. Now, I can’t read French very well, so I would miss any subtleties to these stories that would indicate humour and this story is from two decades ago, before the internet went mainstream, so I am having a hard time finding much. It’s possible that this is a joke, but 173k signatures is a long way to go for a joke, and there was an official inquiry into banning FN that followed soon after. I’m accepting it as legitimate until such someone shows otherwise.

The first step is to find a moderately obscure topic you would know far more about than your average English grad would. It can be anything: something related to your career, a hobby you’re deep into, your religion, an academic area you’ve studied extensively, or even pastel ponies. Choose something of which you have a deep knowledge.

Having chosen your topic, look for articles in the mainstream news on the topic. Try the big ones: CNN, the NYT, the Washington Post, or, in Canada, the CBC. Having found a few articles from a few different sources read them.

Notice every time they are inaccurate, make a factual mistake, leave out something important, make a logical fallacy, write something that doesn’t make sense, or otherwise distort reality.

Having done this, think on the fact that every other topic covered by the media has errors to the same extent, except you don’t notice because you don’t know more about that topic than your average J-school graduate.

Then consider how you, and most everybody else, becomes informed about things they don’t know of.

This is where the horror sets in.

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To let the horror creep in more, look to your career. Remember that obscure regulation nobody outside your particular occupation or industry would know of, the one that: made society worse, was borderline insane, the government had no business being in, allowed a person/company to rob the taxpayer, made your job more miserable than it should be, and/or was just pointless busywork to employ bureaucrats?

You probably never talked of it to anyone other than possibly the occasional rant to a friend or two or some co-workers.

Now think on the fact that there are thousands of other occupations and industries you are not employed in and where you would not be able to know that obscure regulation.

I’m a little late on the bandwagon, so by now you’ve probably heard that Phil Robertson was suspended by A&E from the reality show, Duck Dynasty for some comments made during an interview with GQ. I made a smallseries of tweets when I first came across the event.

This event is significant because it is the first time the brown scare has impacted a particular person this well known to the mainstream. Sure, Watson, Dickenson, Summers, Richwine, Derbyshire, et al. were victims of the witchhunt, but none of those names are ones the average Joe on the street would rcognize. Sure, Chic-Fil-A was persecuted, but its a faceless corporation; who’s ever heard of Dan Cathy?

But Duck Dynasty is huge and Phil Robertson is a recognizable individual. It’s the most-watched nonfiction show of all time and A&E’s highest rated show fo all time. He is somebody your average middle-American knows and likes.

The culture war has been raging for a while, but mostly in words and on the political level. Phil shows the red states, the vaisyas, how far the the progressives are willing to go to enforce ideological conformity. It shows how much the elites truly do detest middle America. It makes the culture war personal by showing that they’re ready and willing to not just denounce you, but to steal your livelihood simply for speaking what you think.

Now that the working-to-middle class whites now have a sampling of the elites hatred towards them, hopefully they will see the class war being waged against them.

For hate is the only explanation* for this: Duck Dynasty is insanely profitable and popular for a second-rate cable network previously best known for Law and Order reruns. There is absolutely no business reason to mess with a formula that works. Any fool can see that the 77% of America that are Christian vastly outnumber the <4% of America that is gay.

The cultural elites hate the conservative low-to-middle class whites that are the primary consumers of the show and they hate the Christian morality and traditional family structures the show portrays.

They wish to destroy these whites, their lifestyle, and their morality.

Oh, how the elites at A&E must rue how their attempt to mock the rednecks has backfired. I would have loved to see their faces when they realized their laugh-at-the-rednecks show become popular for all the ‘wrong’ reasons. It’s Archie Bunker all over again.

In a cultural wasteland of “reality” programming showcasing degenerates, freaks, perverts, broken homes, blackened souls, and empty, twisted hearts, Duck Dynasty focuses on a normal, functional, loving family holding to a solid moral framework and enjoying their lives. It presents a cultural alternative to the broken, empty world the cultural elites are trying to force onto the masses.

Whatever our opinions of TV, the simple fact is most Americans are consumers of TV. Duck Dynasty is one of the few shows to show working-class whites, Christianity, and traditional morality in a positive light and it is one of the few that gives the masses something moral and uplifting.

For this Duck Dynasty and Phil Robertson deserves support.

*There is a very small chance this was a publicity stunt by A&E. I don’t think its likely, but you never know.

Dalrock has already pointed out the moral problems with the ad, I’m going to focus the advertisement aspects. Dalrock argues that the ad is aimed at churchian feminist woman, and I agree because otherwise, the proponents of marriage suck at advertising.

Instead of making marriage look like something men would want to pursue and would be willing to sacrifice for, they make it look horrible.

In the little skit in the middle, the man is the thoroughly henpecked, seemingly unhappy husband of a fat, dumpy, controlling wife. He’s so thoroughly beaten down that he’s afraid to have a little masculine bonding time with his son, with the video implying that there’s something wrong with him wanting to do so.

Watching this, my main thought was”is this really how they want to advertise marriage to men?”

I’m lean more towards the more pro-marriage part of the manosphere, but this would drive me away from marriage more than any other possible effect it could have. What kind of man would desire to become that husband?

What young man could possibly watch that and say, “yeah, I want to man-up and marry so I too can be a the ball-less husband of an ugly, dominating shrew who’s afraid to play pool with his son.”

C’mon guys. If you want men to man-up and marry how about making marriage look good? How about making marriage seem like a rewarding experience?

In fact, I’ll give you guys an awesome marketing campaign. A marketing idea this good would generally cost thousands of dollars from a slick New York agency, but I’ll give it to you for free because I love western civilization and we need working marriages to keep the remnant chugging.

Here’s my ad campaign for a man-up series:

It starts with an average-looking man in a suit, someone most guys could identify with, coming home from a day at the office. He looks kind of worn-out and stressed. He parks his car, sighs a bit, then walks up to his house. He opens the door.

The first thing seen when the door opens is his non-offensively pretty wife dressed femininely. She looks up from working in the kitchen and sees he’s stressed, so she comes up to him with a smile on her face and gives him a hug and quick kiss on the lips. She takes his bag and says, “Dinner is almost ready, why don’t you sit down?” He gets into his recliner and leans back, his stress visibly fading away. She joyfully brings him a small plate of freshly made cookies and some milk. He thanks her with an expression of mingled gratitude and relief and takes the cookie. While he snacks she says, “How about later…” and bends over and whispers something in his ear while brushing her hand up his leg. The man responds with a large, expectant smile.

Cut to her calling out that dinner is ready. The man goes to the table to find a delicious home-cooked meal of steak and potatoes, his cute, happy children run up to the table. His wife wipes the dirt smudges off of one of the rascals as they sit down. The man looks on proudly as he sits at the head of the table. His wife sits to his right. She looks at him with an expectant smile, her hand on his arm, and he proudly says grace for the family.

During the prayer fade to black and end with the tagline: Worth being a man for.

Boom. I’d want buy that product. I don’t know a man who wouldn’t.

I’d happily man-up to come home to that; I’d happily work 70 hour weeks to come home to that; I would happily sacrifice quite a bit to come home to that. So, would most men. Most men would willingly sacrifice their left nut for that.

So, some marketing advice to Mr. Driscoll. If you want men to man-up and marry, make marriage seem like something rewarding for men.

McDonald’s doesn’t sell cheeseburgers by having a fat, ugly man eat them in his dingy basement while playing WoW and sobbing to himself. They sell cheeseburgers by showing groups of realistically attractive people having fun together while eating cheeseburgers.

Likewise, you don’t make men desire to man-up and marry by showing marriage as a demasculating process of having your pride, virility, and freedom slowly drained from you by an ugly, domineering shrew. You make men want to get married by showing marriage as a refuge from the cares of the world occupied by a pretty, loving, nurturing woman.

Then again, my campaign might be false advertising for most men. Driscoll might get sued.